July 25, 2025
How the son of a media giant forged his own path as an ABC News correspondent
Posted by WARREN PERLEY – Editor, BestStory.ca
Writing from Montreal
In the summer of 1972, as I sat at an eight-foot-long metal table editing wire copy under harsh neon lights in a dingy Montreal newsroom, I had no inkling that the tall, sandy-haired summer student sitting across from me would one day morph into a foreign correspondent for ABC News.
Everyone hunched over that long editing table, busily typing or reading wire copy, was in their early 20s – except the aloof kid with the sandy hair. Someone told me he was only 19; he didn’t talk much. But he was considered an “up-and-comer”, a pending graduate of the journalism program at Indiana University, where he picked up the nickname Johnny Canuck.
His real name was John McKenzie. But nobody in the newsroom seemed to know much about him – we certainly had no idea that his father was Ken McKenzie, founder and publisher of The Hockey News, the “bible of hockey”.
In those days, CP staffers were addressed by their initials. I tried to make nice with JMK – a.k.a. John McKenzie – by inviting him to join the rest of the crew in ordering a decadent offering from our favourite take-out joint, Pine’s Pizza. He would have none of it, instead pointing to a brown bag containing his supper, usually a sandwich – which he ate alone at a separate table every night.
I eventually discovered that JMK was a young man with lofty ambitions and a blue-collar work ethic, but not someone who readily shared his dreams with colleagues. His real goal was to become a television reporter and eventually a foreign correspondent. He later credited his print training at CP for helping him write tight scripts.
He quickly moved up the ranks, first in local television in Montreal, then on to network news with CTV, where he became Montreal Bureau Chief at the ripe old age of 21. Five years later – on November 22, 1980 – a Montreal Gazette article noted JMK’s hiring at ABC News and his immediate appointment to head the first Western television bureau in Poland. This was at a time when the Soviet Union was threatening to invade Poland at any moment. As the sole ABC News reporter in the country, he filed reports each day for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Good Morning America, Nightline, and ABC News radio. He was also up against stiff competition from seasoned pros: Bert Quint of CBS, and John Hart of NBC. “I have never worked so hard in my life,” John once confided. “This was my first assignment for ABC and I was struggling to make it through each day.”
Before being shipped off to Warsaw, John – a bachelor at the time – was quoted by the Gazette as saying he would not miss the social life of London or Ottawa, where he had been stationed previously with CTV. “I’m only looking to work hard,” he told the Gazette of his new posting with ABC News. “I’ve got a great deal of responsibility in this new job and I want to do well.”
The newspaper noted John’s earlier stints with Canadian Press, Associated Press, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Time Magazine. John, who had plotted his career course up to that point like a player contemplating a chess board, acknowledged to the Gazette: “You know, I used to chart things out carefully. But in the past two or three years, things have happened too quickly.”
JMK’s first television boss, Bert Cannings, news director at CFCF in Montreal, was quoted as saying: “McKenzie was one of the better lads who’ve crossed my path. He’s a highly reliable man, a good honest journalist. If he ever applied for a job with me and I didn’t have a job opening, I’d make a vacancy for him.”
Based on his impressive body of work as journalist, there have been many organizations that have opened their doors to JMK and will likely continue to do so. Here are some of his recollections from a 30-year career as an ABC News correspondent.
• Evangelist Billy Graham – “He got angry with me because I asked some tough questions about his son, Franklin, who was being groomed to take over the ministry. During the interview, with cameras rolling, he suddenly became noticeably stern – and I got scared. It felt like God was expressing his displeasure with me.”
• Tennis player Venus Williams when she was about 15 – “I upset her father, Richard Williams. He interrupted the interview to berate me at length, on camera, upset that I was asking Venus too many questions about why she felt confident she could beat older, more experienced tennis players.” That confrontation was portrayed in the movie ‘King Richard’.
• Singer Tony Bennett – “I followed Tony on tour, from city to city, for the ABC News program Day One. I interviewed him at each stop, much to his frustration. He never wanted to divulge much about those earlier years when his career was floundering. But I kept trying.”
• Lech Walesa, a shipyard electrician who became leader of the union movement, Solidarity, in 1980 and was later president of Poland – “Any time we needed Lech, we always knew where to find him. Lech liked to spend his evenings with a young Polish girl we had hired as our fixer.” John was eventually expelled from Poland as a persona non grata after the state security service heard a tape, secretly recorded, of him asking a soldier he knew how Polish troops would respond if the Soviets invaded.
• PLO chairman Yasser Arafat – “This was a last-minute assignment. We were told to wait in the lobby of Beirut’s Commodore Hotel (known to all Doonesbury fans) and PLO security would pick us up at midnight. We were blindfolded and driven to a small office building, where we descended four floors and set up all the camera gear. After another one-hour wait, the chairman appeared with a wide grin. He spoke perfect English, and we started off telling a few jokes. ‘Should we tell you the soundman is Jewish?’ Everyone howled.”
These days John, the father of three grown children, works in the south of France where he puts his vast communication experience to good use, guiding innovative European companies and non-profit organizations.
Like his father, Ken McKenzie, decades earlier, JMK has always embraced challenges and risks en route to seizing opportunities to advance his career – proving, once again, the adage that the apple does not fall far from the tree.